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I tried smoking a pork **** (shoulder). 4 hours of smoke, then 4 in the oven. Final internal temp was around 180. It was a little tough. Might have needed more time or it was the cheap Costco meat I used. I plan to try again this summer (probably the 4th), but I found a good butcher I'll go to.
Yeah, pork shoulder is all about low and slow. The pork is totally safe to eat with an internal temp of 180, but it won't be tender enough to pull unless the internal temp is at least 190. And even then, it won't really be optimal to pull without cooking it longer than eight hours.
The reason duration is so important when cooking pork shoulder is all the connective tissues in the meat need lots of time in order to liquify and melt into the meat -- this is what makes the finished product so tender that it "falls off the bone," so to speak. You can't brute-force your way to that kind of tenderness just by cranking up the heat and accelerating the cooking process -- only time will do the trick. Personally, I've never cooked a pork shoulder for less than 12 hours, and I've found the best results when I put my oven to use (as described above) and stretch the cooking process to around 20 hours.
(NOTE: The process of slow-cooking pork is essentially this.... you cook the meat until its internal temp reaches 160 to 170... at that point, the cooking process seems to stall, and the internal temp can sometimes pause in this range for hours. That's because the moisture in the meat is keeping it from cooking further, so you essentially need to let the meat dry out in order to continue the cooking process... HOWEVER, after a certain point, then the connective tissues melt and re-moisten the meat. So when cooking pork shoulder, you really need to think of it in two parts... there's the effort to cook the meat to 190-200 degrees (which takes low, steady heat) and the effort to melt the issues (which flat-out takes time).
My dad is actually an award-winning amateur chef in the Portland area (I'm decent at barbecuing, but not really much of a cook, just FYI), and he gave me a good tip for pork shoulder that I'm going to try with my next batch... in order to extend the cooking duration without overcooking the meat, he recommends just turning the oven off for a few hours at some point during the cooking process, preferably once the internal temp is above 180. If left in the unopened oven, the meat will remain hot enough to remain "safe" from bacteria while giving the tissues even more time to break down, but at the same time you're not applying more heat to continue the actual cooking process.
Basically, the more you can stretch out the duration of cooking pork shoulder, the better the end result will be. But overall, I wouldn't cook it at temperatures below 200 degrees for health and safety reasons.
Also, don't cook in temps above 250. I aim for 225 when smoking in the bbq, then 200 for the long haul in the oven, then 250 in the bbq to finish it off the next day.
Edited, May 27th 2016 10:44am by Thayos